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View the page of Karl Gerth

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Karl Gerth delves into the history of consumerism and capitalism in China, challenging traditional views of the 1949-1976 period.

Image courtesy of interviewee. July 3, 2024

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In an interview discussing consumerism and its effects on China's Communist revolution, the speaker reflects on their motivations for writing a book about this topic. They express dissatisfaction with the conventional narrative and aim to uncover the complex role of consumerism in China's history, particularly during the revolutionary period from 1949 to 1976.

The speaker emphasizes their research process, highlighting the importance of digital resources that allowed them to gather a wide range of evidence showing that consumerism was indeed present during this period, challenging the idea that it was entirely absent or marginal. They define consumerism as a phenomenon intertwined with mass production and identity construction, suggesting that consumer goods played a significant role in self-expression and social status.

The conversation reveals that the policies and practices of the Communist Party inadvertently led to the emergence of inequalities and a form of state consumerism, where the focus on industrialization and economic growth undermined the original goals of the revolution. The speaker critiques the assumption that China's development represents a successful socialist model, arguing instead that it reflects a variant of capitalism.

The influence of the Soviet Union is discussed, with the speaker noting that while it initially served as a model for China's development, it also became a cautionary tale about the dangers of inequality. The interview concludes with a call for readers to rethink the binary view of capitalism and communism, suggesting that understanding consumerism as a broader and more nuanced phenomenon would provide better insights into contemporary global issues.

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Here are some articles that may align with the themes discussed in the video you about consumerism and its effects on China's Communist revolution:

1. **“Consumerism and its Discontents in China: A Historical Perspective”**
This article explores the historical development of consumerism in China, focusing on the transition from a communist ideology to a more market-oriented economy, and how consumer behavior has evolved over time. It critically assesses the impact of this shift on Chinese society.

2. **“The Role of Consumer Goods in the Construction of Identity in Post-Revolutionary China”**
This piece investigates how consumer goods have informed personal and social identities in China, particularly in the convideo of the post-1949 period. It analyzes the broader implications of consumerism on cultural practices and social hierarchies.

3. **“Rethinking Socialism: Consumerism and Economic Growth in Modern China”**
An analytical overview of the paradox of consumerism within the framework of socialism, this article examines how Chinese economic policies have stimulated consumption and the unintended consequences this has had on social equality and identity.

4. **“The Legacy of Soviet Influence on Chinese Economic Policies”**
This article discusses how the ideological and economic lessons from the Soviet Union have shaped China's own approach to development and consumerism, highlighting both the inspiration and the pitfalls that have arisen.

5. **“From Revolution to Consumerism: The Changing Face of Chinese Society”**
This article looks at the transformation of Chinese society from a revolutionary ethos to one characterized by consumer culture, analyzing how government policies and social constructs have facilitated this shift.

6. **“Globalization, Consumerism, and the New Social Order in China”**
This piece examines how globalization has fueled consumerism in China and altered social dynamics, challenging the traditional binary of capitalist versus communist ideologies and offering insights into the resulting inequalities.

7. **“Understanding Consumerism as a Social Phenomenon: Implications for Modern China”**
A discourse on consumerism's broader implications in social theory, this article investigates how understanding consumer trends in China can shed light on contemporary global challenges related to capitalism and social equity.

These articles could provide a deeper insight into the complexities of consumerism in the convideo of China's historical and political landscape as highlighted in the interview video.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Why I wrote this book.

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Uh, the satisfaction, I, I would say,

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motivated me to write this book.

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I wanted to find a more convincing, explanation for

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the material that I was working on.

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For the past 30 years, I've been working on the history

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of consumerism, the development of capitalism in China,

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really from the late 19th century

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all the way down to the present.

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Uh, my first book was on the development of consumerism,

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in the first half of the 20th century.

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And then my second book was the easiest part,

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the contemporary stuff from the 1980s forward,

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the reemergence of everything

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that we associate with consumerism.

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So mass production of branded products, circulation of

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how important it is to consume these products,

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to construct your identity,

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and then the communication of who we are

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through the con consumption

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of these mass produced branded products.

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So there I had the be, I had the beginnings of the story.

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I had the end of the story,

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but I had what I, I was missing

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what I called the mysterious middle, the period from 1949

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to 1976, which we think of as revolutionary or Maos China,

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or communist China.

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What happened to the story during that period?

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Um, I think most people would've assumed

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that there was very little consumerism going on.

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Um, and if it was going on, it was pretty marginal

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to the story compared to the sort of political struggles

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that we usually associate with communist China, China trying

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to, destroy capitalism

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and create both for itself in the world,

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a non-capitalist socialist alternative.

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So I wanted to try to figure out my material as I, you know,

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started to look for evidence of the expansion

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of industrial production,

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of mass produced branded goods like wristwatches, bicycles,

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sewing machines, that sort of thing.

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And the, the distribution of that stuff.

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And then increasingly, people wanting that stuff

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to communicate to the world who they are.

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It didn't fit into that story of either there wasn't any

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of this going on, or that it didn't mean anything.

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In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized

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that the kind of standard way of looking at this period

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as anti-capitalist didn't make sense.

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Uh, when I dug a little bit deeper, I found lots

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of people who were questioning,

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are we really building an alternative to capitalism?

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Because we look at the distribution

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of all this stuff being produced,

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and it sure looks like a continuation

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of the same, kind of story.

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So, yeah, I'd start, I'd start by saying

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that dissatisfaction

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with the conventional way in which I might've interpreted my

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story, I didn't wanna just slap like

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so many people do the word socialist in front of it

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and call it socialist consumerism, which I kind of see

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as an oxymoron.

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You can't have one without the other.

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Um, I didn't wanna just fit it into the standard,

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framework for understanding these things.

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So I dug a little bit deeper

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and found, other people explaining this phenomenon,

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and in other ways, starting with them, explaining it

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as a continuation of the development

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of industrial capitalism exactly as Marx himself predicted,

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search far and wide for materials.

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And really, I doubt I could have written the same book in

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any case if I had tried to do this 20 years ago.

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So there's really digital resources that allowed me to

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Search far and wide.

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So you'd search for words like show, wristwatch,

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and you'd find it popping up all over the place.

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Um, so I found,

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you not only found it popping up all over the place

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and conventional, sources like archives and newspapers,

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but you'd also find it on the internet,

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on things like blocks.

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Well, people might not want to talk about what they did

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during, controversial periods of that time in China.

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So such as the cultural revolution in the late 1960s

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and early seventies, everybody,

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at least every urbanite had a story of

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how they acquired their first wristwatch bicycle

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and sewing machine, and

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what it meant to them and their family.

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So I found mountains of evidence from all over the place.

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Again, once you start to look for the, the existence

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of consumerism, there's no shortage of examples.

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I define consumerism, as having three aspects.

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As I mentioned, it's about mass production.

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So it's what we associate with industrial capitalism

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everywhere, that you start harnessing the power

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of fossil fuels to produce more and more stuff.

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Um, and that in addition to more

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and more stuff, you have more

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and more ideas being associated with that stuff

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through the arrival of mass media, through, so,

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like newspaper advertising would be

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a famous example of this.

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And then finally, you have the communication

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of hierarchical different identities through the consumption

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of this mass produced stuff.

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So, I'm better than you, or I'm more athletic than you

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because I wear Michael Jordan gym shoes, or I drink this

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or that beer, or I'm a sophisticate

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because I have a Shanghai Chobi rather than a regional brand

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of, of wristwatch, like a yang, ch so all three

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of those things you can see introduced alongside industrial

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capitalism in China in the late 19th and early 20th century.

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So I came to conclude

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that consumerism is really the demand side of,

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of industrial capitalism, that

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as industrial capitalism produced more

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and more stuff simultaneously,

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or maybe even earlier, you had to ensure

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that people would want more and more stuff,

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and that they'd be willing to exchange, say time, free time,

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in order to work for wages, in order to acquire

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that more and more stuff.

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So you certainly saw that late 19th, early 20th century, all

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that stuff was in place, before the,

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before the communists, took over in 1949.

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What really separates them in this entire sweep, is

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what I, establishment of what I see

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as a massive contradiction, a contradiction between words

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and deeds, a contradiction between the social rhetoric

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that they were building, an anti-capitalist alternative.

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And the reality is on the ground that, that, again,

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as Marx himself predicted, would lead to massive amounts

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of inequality, inequalities, such as

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what Mark's pointed out, three primary ones,

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that people in cities would benefit

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before people in the countryside.

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And we certainly saw that in China,

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the primitive accumulation, the original capital required

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to industrialize came from squeezing the jeers out

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of the Chinese countryside.

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Uh, so at first you had cities over the countryside.

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Second, you had mental work over manual work,

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and thirdly, you had factory work over, over rural work.

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So, kind of easy way

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to think about this is in the late 1950s when China starts

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to produce wristwatches bicycles

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and sewing machines, who got them first,

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and then who got them second and third and so on.

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Well, guess what? If you were a cadre,

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a Chinese government official in a factory in a city,

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I'm pretty sure you got one much sooner than say,

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a woman working in a field in, you know,

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a minority woman working in a field in, in,

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on the borders of China.

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Um, so yeah, I see that story as certainly

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that mass production circulation of ideas

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and increasingly, not entirely increasingly,

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the communication of who you are, not through, say,

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your social role in society, that I'm a mother

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or I'm a factory worker or whatever.

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But through the consumption of these mass produced branded

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things that all of that expands, continually across,

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the 20th century as part of China's industrialization,

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I believe that my title should effectively tell you

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everything that you need to know about my book,

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unending Capitalism, the Chinese Communist Party

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and their revolution in 1949 promised to do

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what end capitalism

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and replace it with the next stage of history and socialism

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and route to communism.

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Uh, but as the subtitle, runs how,

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how consumerism negated the Chinese,

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communist Revolution, I I look at how they intended

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to do one thing, but in the course of dev,

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prioritizing industrial development, in other words,

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the needs to continually expand capital

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and reinvest capital, make it grow as quickly

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as possible in prioritizing, the economic aspects

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of their plan above the social revolution, aspects

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of their plan, they destroyed, their revolution

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and created the, institutional foundations

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of inequalities that just exploded in the 1980s

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and all the way down to the present.

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So I guess we have two ways of interpreting what happened.

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We can take their word for it.

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They say right down to the present that there's still,

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still building socialism on the way to communism.

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It just so happens that they're going to need billionaires,

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so massive amounts of inequality, so

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that capital can be super flexible

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so they can compete against,

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their rivals internationally,

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but take their word for it, their end route.

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Um, I prefer, rather than to take people's word for it,

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I prefer to examine what's going on in the ground

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and characterize that society by what's going, by what I,

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not only what I see all these years later going on,

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on the ground, but also listening to the doubts

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of people at all levels of Chinese society.

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This, this idea that China was negating

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or destroying its own revolution,

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that word I take from Mao himself, who in 1965 on the eve

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of the cultural revolution, himself said,

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the children are destroying or negating the revolution.

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So yeah, once you begin to look for doubts,

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rather than assuming everyone thought, Hey, this is

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what building socialism looks like, it may take billionaires

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and a few hundred years to get there, as they currently say.

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Um, I'd rather kind of keep an eye out for people

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who saw what I saw

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and saw the inequalities that were emerging

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and said, gee, guys, if you're planning to do x it,

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build socialism as internal, as an alternative

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to capitalism.

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It sure as hell looks like here on the ground,

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like you're actually, reproducing industrial capitalism.

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I see consumerism as both self-expanding and compulsory.

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I suspect that sounds a little bit vague,

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self-expanding and compulsory.

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What, what does that look like? Well, you could see

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that pretty easily in practice in China across the 1950s,

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into the eighties, into the nineties,

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and into the 21st century, that across that period of time,

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what was the luxury continually expanded,

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and it didn't expanded just on someone's say.

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So it self expanded.

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So it expanded from the 1950s when the most desirable items

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to have were, whereas I've said a wristwatch, a bicycle,

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and a sewing machine, by the time

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that we reached the 1980s, those must have items in cities,

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where a tv, a washing machine and,

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and a boombox, I dunno if you're old enough to remember

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that, the sort of thing that blast music,

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back in the day in the 1990s,

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the those must have items morphed into a stereo,

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a refrigerator, and a computer.

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And finally, in the 21st century,

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you can see much more technologically intensive,

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capital intensive stuff like a condo, a car,

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or perhaps an exotic, vacation.

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So that sort of indicates what I mean by self-expanding,

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that there is no kind of odds behind a screen,

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pulling levers, having all of this stuff happen.

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What I mean by compulsory, maybe the easiest way

10:32.285 --> 10:33.605
to illustrate this is by

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what social scientists called social reproduction,

10:36.485 --> 10:39.365
the ability to pass along your genes, have children.

10:39.955 --> 10:42.845
Well, back in the day, if, if your family wasn't able

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to secure these kinds of items, you wouldn't be able

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to marry, you wouldn't be able to find a wife for your son.

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You literally would not be able to socially reproduce.

10:52.905 --> 10:54.805
So that's the way I see it as compulsory.

10:54.805 --> 10:57.205
We can see compulsory a lot easier in capitalism.

10:57.385 --> 10:59.325
You've gotta earn wages in order

10:59.385 --> 11:01.645
to gain the necessities to survive.

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But here it's a little bit more subtle in the realm

11:04.565 --> 11:06.565
of consumption and consumerism that you need

11:06.565 --> 11:09.365
to participate in this realm of, of, of,

11:09.385 --> 11:12.725
of acquiring these things that society, has deemed

11:12.785 --> 11:17.455
as socially invaluable, in order to, have a family

11:17.515 --> 11:18.855
and pass along your DNA.

11:19.035 --> 11:20.415
So that's the way I see those,

11:20.415 --> 11:21.575
two things working together

11:21.795 --> 11:23.775
to continually throughout this period.

11:24.355 --> 11:27.375
And I think that's kind of important for understanding,

11:27.475 --> 11:29.095
the world that we live in even today.

11:29.515 --> 11:32.695
If we see the system, if we see not what went on in China

11:32.695 --> 11:35.215
during that period as a radical alternative to

11:35.215 --> 11:38.575
what we see today, self-expanding compulsory capitalism

11:38.755 --> 11:41.775
and consumerism, if we saw that as a kind of magical other

11:41.775 --> 11:44.495
that could have solved all our problems, if only, if only,

11:44.915 --> 11:47.055
if only Mao had lived another a hundred years

11:47.115 --> 11:50.295
or whatever, and they had finished off the revolution,

11:50.325 --> 11:51.975
then we would view the kind of problems

11:51.975 --> 11:53.320
that we're facing today differently.

11:53.395 --> 11:54.725
We'd say, aha, there's a way

11:54.725 --> 11:56.565
of escaping our capitalist predicament.

11:56.945 --> 11:58.765
But I think if we see that what, what

11:58.765 --> 12:01.485
what went on then is a, is a variation,

12:01.805 --> 12:05.685
a state dominated variation of the exact, exact same things

12:05.685 --> 12:06.965
that we see not only now,

12:06.985 --> 12:09.085
but reemerging in China and the United States.

12:09.145 --> 12:12.205
Now, a state dominated a variety

12:12.385 --> 12:14.285
of consumerism and capitalism.

12:14.585 --> 12:17.405
We understand just how difficult it's gonna be for us

12:17.465 --> 12:20.725
to change the system in ATI in a time to save the planet

12:20.825 --> 12:23.645
and address these other, social ills created

12:23.825 --> 12:26.365
by unfettered consumerism and capitalists.

12:26.365 --> 12:29.405
The Soviet Union played two different roles in the

12:29.565 --> 12:31.965
development of consumerism in China,

12:32.105 --> 12:34.605
and really the development of the people's Republic of China

12:34.605 --> 12:39.285
after 1949, famously in the 19, fifties, early 1950s,

12:39.385 --> 12:41.405
it was known as daca older brother.

12:41.745 --> 12:44.245
It was a model for what, China wanted to do.

12:44.705 --> 12:48.125
Uh, but China increasingly became, dissatisfied with

12:48.125 --> 12:51.445
what it saw, going on in the Soviet Union, disgusted,

12:51.445 --> 12:53.525
for instance, with the inequalities emerging.

12:53.665 --> 12:56.605
The exact same inequalities that they would, continually

12:56.625 --> 13:00.485
to, criticize, in the Soviet Union began

13:00.485 --> 13:01.885
to emerge in their own country.

13:02.465 --> 13:05.685
So much so in the early, by the early 1960s when they split

13:05.685 --> 13:08.605
with the Soviet Union, they accused Khrushchev

13:08.705 --> 13:11.005
of enacting a capitalist restoration.

13:11.665 --> 13:13.645
Now, one of the things I I point out in my book,

13:13.955 --> 13:16.165
when I emphasize that my interpretation

13:16.165 --> 13:17.325
of everything going on here,

13:17.325 --> 13:19.325
that they weren't building socialism,

13:19.425 --> 13:22.925
but rather building a different version of variety,

13:23.285 --> 13:24.845
a state led variety

13:24.845 --> 13:27.045
of capitalism would've been completely

13:27.125 --> 13:28.565
sensible to my subjects.

13:28.745 --> 13:32.245
Why? Because the Communist party themselves ironically

13:32.485 --> 13:35.245
disseminated, Hey, guys, this is what a revol

13:35.245 --> 13:38.405
after a communist revolution, this is what the restoration

13:38.405 --> 13:39.565
of capitalism looks like.

13:39.565 --> 13:40.605
Look at the Soviet Union.

13:41.115 --> 13:44.325
Well, you didn't have to look far to see the exact types

13:44.385 --> 13:47.485
of inequalities emerging across Chinese society.

13:47.785 --> 13:49.925
So the Soviet Union, on the one hand,

13:49.945 --> 13:51.885
became an initial model of, okay,

13:51.905 --> 13:54.405
how do we go about having,

13:54.405 --> 13:56.165
the state dominate the economy?

13:56.665 --> 14:00.045
But then by the early 1960s became a sort of cautionary tale

14:00.065 --> 14:04.005
of if we don't address these, burgeoning inequalities

14:04.005 --> 14:07.765
that seem to be accompanying our building socialism,

14:07.775 --> 14:10.125
we're gonna end up like the Soviet Union having a

14:10.125 --> 14:13.205
technocratic elite that sure seems like the functional

14:13.575 --> 14:16.605
equivalent of a capitalist class in capitalist countries.

14:16.905 --> 14:20.165
It may be different in that it's not privately owned capital

14:20.625 --> 14:22.205
and may be state owned instead,

14:22.465 --> 14:24.965
but you'd still have this group of people

14:25.145 --> 14:27.885
who were separated from production, who were responsible

14:27.885 --> 14:30.285
for deciding where everything was allocated,

14:30.425 --> 14:32.965
and those people would be the primary beneficiaries.

14:32.965 --> 14:35.205
In other words, you'd have a class-based society,

14:35.545 --> 14:37.725
and by one definition, ergo or

14:37.725 --> 14:40.005
consequently, you'd have capitalism.

14:40.625 --> 14:43.925
So Soviet Union played this sort of, twin role of both,

14:43.985 --> 14:45.805
here's, here's how to go about doing it,

14:45.945 --> 14:47.765
but then providing a cautionary tale,

14:47.765 --> 14:51.525
and then ironically, disseminating the idea of doubt about

14:51.555 --> 14:53.805
what the Communist party was actually building

14:53.805 --> 14:55.165
throughout Chinese society.

14:55.465 --> 14:58.565
So I would categorically reject the idea that people

14:58.705 --> 15:02.325
inside China who are living this experiment, always thought,

15:02.355 --> 15:04.045
this is what socialism must look like.

15:04.225 --> 15:06.325
No, when we begin to look a little bit deeper

15:06.385 --> 15:08.645
and look beyond the people who are benefiting,

15:08.825 --> 15:11.125
you could find, find plenty of both words

15:11.265 --> 15:14.845
and deeds indicating, that, that these people took

15:14.845 --> 15:17.885
that Soviet lesson to heart and saw, I better get mine,

15:17.885 --> 15:20.365
because these inequalities are unfolding pretty quickly.

15:20.925 --> 15:22.365
Envision capitalism in China

15:22.505 --> 15:25.125
and consumerism in China is existing on a spectrum,

15:25.765 --> 15:28.885
a spectrum from total state domination, which never exists

15:29.145 --> 15:32.205
to total market mediation from total pri

15:32.305 --> 15:34.965
or from total public ownership of everything

15:35.385 --> 15:38.325
to total private ownership of everything, every country,

15:38.415 --> 15:40.445
every industrializing country, for me,

15:40.745 --> 15:42.045
is shifting along that spectrum.

15:42.375 --> 15:46.485
Guess what? Most late comers to industrial capitalism are,

15:46.625 --> 15:49.085
are quite a bit, whether they call themselves communist

15:49.085 --> 15:51.925
or not, are at that state led end of the spectrum.

15:52.385 --> 15:55.445
So in the realm of, of, of, consumerism,

15:55.745 --> 15:58.445
we see a heavy state role in all those three areas

15:58.475 --> 16:00.885
that I named a heavy state role in saying

16:00.915 --> 16:03.655
what we're gonna produce less caviar,

16:03.685 --> 16:05.535
more steel, for instance.

16:05.795 --> 16:08.855
Uh, what ideas, that's where advertising comes in here,

16:08.915 --> 16:10.855
how we're gonna go about circulating ideas

16:10.875 --> 16:13.415
and what the content of those ideas are going to be.

16:13.715 --> 16:16.295
And then they're gonna try to intervene by holding up models

16:16.395 --> 16:19.455
of this is what a good socialist to new, good new,

16:19.655 --> 16:21.135
revolutionary socialist person looks like.

16:21.135 --> 16:23.775
They're gonna try to control all three of those things,

16:24.115 --> 16:26.735
but as just as sort I've said on the spectrum, no,

16:26.875 --> 16:30.055
no such thing as a perfect exemplar of either end of that,

16:30.285 --> 16:31.895
they couldn't control all of that.

16:32.155 --> 16:35.375
So they would both try to control the message by control,

16:35.475 --> 16:37.335
by, by controlling the media,

16:37.515 --> 16:38.855
and the movies being produced

16:38.855 --> 16:41.375
and every other aspect being produced,

16:41.395 --> 16:42.935
but they weren't able to control

16:43.035 --> 16:44.855
how people were receiving those messages.

16:45.115 --> 16:47.775
So you'd have a villain, for instance, in a film like,

16:47.775 --> 16:51.095
never forget the name of the film as in Mouse, famous line.

16:51.095 --> 16:52.535
Never Forget Class Struggle.

16:52.875 --> 16:56.255
The villain, is this acquisitive guy who wants

16:56.255 --> 16:58.575
to acquire a leather jacket, so

16:58.575 --> 17:00.415
that he can feel better about himself,

17:00.535 --> 17:02.215
again, identity through consumption.

17:02.555 --> 17:05.295
And he starts to engage in all sorts of illegal activity.

17:05.675 --> 17:08.295
The, of course, the moral of the story was meant to be,

17:08.305 --> 17:09.375
don't be like this guy.

17:09.425 --> 17:12.455
Don't engage in illegal hunting so that you can,

17:12.485 --> 17:15.015
neglect your factory, your state factory work,

17:15.195 --> 17:18.495
and instead use your labor power for private gain over here.

17:18.955 --> 17:21.615
But how many people took the opposite message from that?

17:21.675 --> 17:22.855
How many people said, gee,

17:22.855 --> 17:24.375
that leather jacket does look nice,

17:24.375 --> 17:27.255
and he does look, pretty, pretty good in that jacket.

17:27.575 --> 17:28.615
I want to get one of those too.

17:28.715 --> 17:30.015
And wow, I never thought that I,

17:30.015 --> 17:31.735
maybe I could go out in the forest

17:31.955 --> 17:34.775
and shoot a few, whatever they have in their forest

17:34.995 --> 17:36.575
and sell it in the market, you know,

17:36.575 --> 17:37.655
underground marketplace.

17:38.355 --> 17:39.695
So yeah, there this,

17:40.005 --> 17:42.935
what I call state consumerism is a good, I, I,

17:43.095 --> 17:46.015
a good example of trying to do both things, trying

17:46.015 --> 17:47.495
to contain what's going on

17:47.555 --> 17:50.220
as you industrialize the production of more and more stuff,

17:50.220 --> 17:53.965
and saying, officially the line was,

17:54.885 --> 17:58.605
frugal living, live a frugal life and work very hard.

17:58.705 --> 18:01.845
So the ideal socialist person was one

18:01.845 --> 18:03.925
that worked their tail off on behalf of the state,

18:04.105 --> 18:07.205
but asked very little in return, guess what?

18:07.385 --> 18:11.245
The reality in, in an increasingly in egalitarian society

18:11.545 --> 18:13.445
was sending people the opposite message.

18:13.585 --> 18:16.525
So that just intensified that, that contradiction

18:16.525 --> 18:17.925
that I've talked about throughout this,

18:17.925 --> 18:20.365
that they would have pretty sounding socialist words

18:20.365 --> 18:23.365
of creating someday, often the not too distant future in

18:23.485 --> 18:24.645
egalitarian society.

18:24.745 --> 18:27.405
But the reality on the ground was the intensification

18:27.405 --> 18:30.365
of those inequalities that Marx predicted, along

18:30.365 --> 18:32.805
with all the others, that we can imagine differences

18:33.075 --> 18:34.125
between men and women,

18:34.565 --> 18:36.285
minority peoples versus Han and so on.

18:36.415 --> 18:38.685
Since the Cold War, we've been told to see the world

18:38.825 --> 18:41.485
as divided between communist countries

18:41.585 --> 18:43.085
and capitalist countries.

18:43.665 --> 18:46.085
Um, but I think that's a false dichotomy.

18:46.445 --> 18:47.965
I think we explain a lot more

18:47.965 --> 18:50.245
of what's going on in the ground as we, if we see them

18:50.265 --> 18:51.885
as varieties of capitalism.

18:52.025 --> 18:54.965
So in the late 1970s, after Mao dies,

18:54.965 --> 18:58.245
and China suddenly shifts to using shifts along

18:58.245 --> 19:00.845
that spectrum towards the use of more markets and,

19:00.865 --> 19:03.685
and toward allowing more private accumulation,

19:03.685 --> 19:04.965
private control over capital,

19:05.235 --> 19:07.685
this doesn't seem like an abandonment of the revolution.

19:07.945 --> 19:09.005
It sort of explains

19:09.585 --> 19:12.765
how they're reconfiguring these institutional arrangements,

19:13.185 --> 19:16.565
such as of how you allocate capital, in,

19:16.565 --> 19:17.925
in order to continue to grow.

19:18.565 --> 19:20.405
I call this an invitation because I say,

19:20.405 --> 19:21.725
don't take my word for it.

19:22.025 --> 19:23.565
Go back to some of these topics

19:23.985 --> 19:25.485
and think about them for yourselves

19:25.585 --> 19:27.325
and see, does this, does my way

19:27.325 --> 19:30.085
of looking at the world explain the material better than

19:30.105 --> 19:31.725
the, what I, what I think of

19:31.725 --> 19:33.685
as the Orthodox communism versus

19:33.855 --> 19:35.885
capitalism, cold War holdover.

19:36.345 --> 19:37.445
Um, I think it does,

19:37.585 --> 19:39.445
it certainly does in the realm of consumerism.

19:39.545 --> 19:42.925
But really, as I've looked around to other topics, it,

19:42.945 --> 19:44.805
it, it just explains a lot more of

19:44.805 --> 19:47.125
that history a lot better once we,

19:47.365 --> 19:50.765
liberate ourselves from the hold, perhaps emotional hold,

19:51.025 --> 19:53.965
that, that Cold War framing, has had for us.

19:54.065 --> 19:56.365
And indeed, given what's going on in the world may have

19:56.385 --> 20:00.245
for us, again, as we redivide the world between us and them.

00:00 - Why I wrote this book. the satisfaction, I, I would say, motivated me to write this book. I wanted to find a more convincing, explanation for the material that I was working on. For the past 30 years, I've been working on the history

00:12 - of consumerism, the development of capitalism in China, really from the late 19th century all the way down to the present. my first book was on the development of consumerism, in the first half of the 20th century. And then my second book was the easiest part, the contemporary stuff from the 1980s forward, the reemergence of everything that we associate with consumerism. So mass production of branded products, circulation of

00:36 - how important it is to consume these products, to construct your identity, and then the communication of who we are through the con consumption of these mass produced branded products. So there I had the be, I had the beginnings of the story. I had the end of the story, but I had what I, I was missing what I called the mysterious middle, the period from 1949 to 1976, which we think of as revolutionary or Maos China,

00:59 - or communist China. What happened to the story during that period? I think most people would've assumed that there was very little consumerism going on. and if it was going on, it was pretty marginal to the story compared to the sort of political struggles that we usually associate with communist China, China trying to, destroy capitalism and create both for itself in the world, a non-capitalist socialist alternative.

01:26 - So I wanted to try to figure out my material as I, you know, started to look for evidence of the expansion of industrial production, of mass produced branded goods like wristwatches, bicycles, sewing machines, that sort of thing. And the, the distribution of that stuff. And then increasingly, people wanting that stuff to communicate to the world who they are. It didn't fit into that story of either there wasn't any of this going on, or that it didn't mean anything.

01:51 - In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the kind of standard way of looking at this period as anti-capitalist didn't make sense. when I dug a little bit deeper, I found lots of people who were questioning, are we really building an alternative to capitalism? Because we look at the distribution of all this stuff being produced, and it sure looks like a continuation of the same, kind of story.

02:14 - So, yeah, I'd start, I'd start by saying that dissatisfaction with the conventional way in which I might've interpreted my story, I didn't wanna just slap like so many people do the word socialist in front of it and call it socialist consumerism, which I kind of see as an oxymoron. You can't have one without the other. I didn't wanna just fit it into the standard, framework for understanding these things.

02:35 - So I dug a little bit deeper and found, other people explaining this phenomenon, and in other ways, starting with them, explaining it as a continuation of the development of industrial capitalism exactly as Marx himself predicted, search far and wide for materials. And really, I doubt I could have written the same book in any case if I had tried to do this 20 years ago. So there's really digital resources that allowed me to Search far and wide.

03:00 - So you'd search for words like show, wristwatch, and you'd find it popping up all over the place. so I found, you not only found it popping up all over the place and conventional, sources like archives and newspapers, but you'd also find it on the internet, on things like blocks. Well, people might not want to talk about what they did during, controversial periods of that time in China. So such as the cultural revolution in the late 1960s

03:27 - and early seventies, everybody, at least every urbanite had a story of how they acquired their first wristwatch bicycle and sewing machine, and what it meant to them and their family. So I found mountains of evidence from all over the place. Again, once you start to look for the, the existence of consumerism, there's no shortage of examples. I define consumerism, as having three aspects. As I mentioned, it's about mass production.

03:51 - So it's what we associate with industrial capitalism everywhere, that you start harnessing the power of fossil fuels to produce more and more stuff. and that in addition to more and more stuff, you have more and more ideas being associated with that stuff through the arrival of mass media, through, so, like newspaper advertising would be a famous example of this. And then finally, you have the communication

04:12 - of hierarchical different identities through the consumption of this mass produced stuff. So, I'm better than you, or I'm more athletic than you because I wear Michael Jordan gym shoes, or I drink this or that beer, or I'm a sophisticate because I have a Shanghai Chobi rather than a regional brand of, of wristwatch, like a yang, ch so all three of those things you can see introduced alongside industrial capitalism in China in the late 19th and early 20th century. So I came to conclude

04:39 - that consumerism is really the demand side of, of industrial capitalism, that as industrial capitalism produced more and more stuff simultaneously, or maybe even earlier, you had to ensure that people would want more and more stuff, and that they'd be willing to exchange, say time, free time, in order to work for wages, in order to acquire that more and more stuff. So you certainly saw that late 19th, early 20th century, all

05:05 - that stuff was in place, before the, before the communists, took over in 1949. What really separates them in this entire sweep, is what I, establishment of what I see as a massive contradiction, a contradiction between words and deeds, a contradiction between the social rhetoric that they were building, an anti-capitalist alternative. And the reality is on the ground that, that, again, as Marx himself predicted, would lead to massive amounts of inequality, inequalities, such as

05:38 - what Mark's pointed out, three primary ones, that people in cities would benefit before people in the countryside. And we certainly saw that in China, the primitive accumulation, the original capital required to industrialize came from squeezing the jeers out of the Chinese countryside. so at first you had cities over the countryside. Second, you had mental work over manual work, and thirdly, you had factory work over, over rural work.

06:05 - So, kind of easy way to think about this is in the late 1950s when China starts to produce wristwatches bicycles and sewing machines, who got them first, and then who got them second and third and so on. Well, guess what? If you were a cadre, a Chinese government official in a factory in a city, I'm pretty sure you got one much sooner than say, a woman working in a field in, you know, a minority woman working in a field in, in,

06:30 - on the borders of China. so yeah, I see that story as certainly that mass production circulation of ideas and increasingly, not entirely increasingly, the communication of who you are, not through, say, your social role in society, that I'm a mother or I'm a factory worker or whatever. But through the consumption of these mass produced branded things that all of that expands, continually across, the 20th century as part of China's industrialization,

06:56 - I believe that my title should effectively tell you everything that you need to know about my book, unending Capitalism, the Chinese Communist Party and their revolution in 1949 promised to do what end capitalism and replace it with the next stage of history and socialism and route to communism. but as the subtitle, runs how, how consumerism negated the Chinese, communist Revolution, I I look at how they intended

07:21 - to do one thing, but in the course of dev, prioritizing industrial development, in other words, the needs to continually expand capital and reinvest capital, make it grow as quickly as possible in prioritizing, the economic aspects of their plan above the social revolution, aspects of their plan, they destroyed, their revolution and created the, institutional foundations of inequalities that just exploded in the 1980s and all the way down to the present.

07:50 - So I guess we have two ways of interpreting what happened. We can take their word for it. They say right down to the present that there's still, still building socialism on the way to communism. It just so happens that they're going to need billionaires, so massive amounts of inequality, so that capital can be super flexible so they can compete against, their rivals internationally, but take their word for it, their end route.

08:15 - I prefer, rather than to take people's word for it, I prefer to examine what's going on in the ground and characterize that society by what's going, by what I, not only what I see all these years later going on, on the ground, but also listening to the doubts of people at all levels of Chinese society. This, this idea that China was negating or destroying its own revolution, that word I take from Mao himself, who in 1965 on the eve of the cultural revolution, himself said,

08:43 - the children are destroying or negating the revolution. So yeah, once you begin to look for doubts, rather than assuming everyone thought, Hey, this is what building socialism looks like, it may take billionaires and a few hundred years to get there, as they currently say. I'd rather kind of keep an eye out for people who saw what I saw and saw the inequalities that were emerging and said, gee, guys, if you're planning to do x it, build socialism as internal, as an alternative

09:10 - to capitalism. It sure as hell looks like here on the ground, like you're actually, reproducing industrial capitalism. I see consumerism as both self-expanding and compulsory. I suspect that sounds a little bit vague, self-expanding and compulsory. What, what does that look like? Well, you could see that pretty easily in practice in China across the 1950s, into the eighties, into the nineties, and into the 21st century, that across that period of time,

09:37 - what was the luxury continually expanded, and it didn't expanded just on someone's say. So it self expanded. So it expanded from the 1950s when the most desirable items to have were, whereas I've said a wristwatch, a bicycle, and a sewing machine, by the time that we reached the 1980s, those must have items in cities, where a tv, a washing machine and, and a boombox, I dunno if you're old enough to remember that, the sort of thing that blast music,

10:04 - back in the day in the 1990s, the those must have items morphed into a stereo, a refrigerator, and a computer. And finally, in the 21st century, you can see much more technologically intensive, capital intensive stuff like a condo, a car, or perhaps an exotic, vacation. So that sort of indicates what I mean by self-expanding, that there is no kind of odds behind a screen, pulling levers, having all of this stuff happen.

10:29 - What I mean by compulsory, maybe the easiest way to illustrate this is by what social scientists called social reproduction, the ability to pass along your genes, have children. Well, back in the day, if, if your family wasn't able to secure these kinds of items, you wouldn't be able to marry, you wouldn't be able to find a wife for your son. You literally would not be able to socially reproduce. So that's the way I see it as compulsory. We can see compulsory a lot easier in capitalism.

10:57 - You've gotta earn wages in order to gain the necessities to survive. But here it's a little bit more subtle in the realm of consumption and consumerism that you need to participate in this realm of, of, of, of acquiring these things that society, has deemed as socially invaluable, in order to, have a family and pass along your DNA. So that's the way I see those, two things working together

11:21 - to continually throughout this period. And I think that's kind of important for understanding, the world that we live in even today. If we see the system, if we see not what went on in China during that period as a radical alternative to what we see today, self-expanding compulsory capitalism and consumerism, if we saw that as a kind of magical other that could have solved all our problems, if only, if only, if only Mao had lived another a hundred years or whatever, and they had finished off the revolution,

11:50 - then we would view the kind of problems that we're facing today differently. We'd say, aha, there's a way of escaping our capitalist predicament. But I think if we see that what, what what went on then is a, is a variation, a state dominated variation of the exact, exact same things that we see not only now, but reemerging in China and the United States. Now, a state dominated a variety

12:12 - of consumerism and capitalism. We understand just how difficult it's gonna be for us to change the system in ATI in a time to save the planet and address these other, social ills created by unfettered consumerism and capitalists. The Soviet Union played two different roles in the development of consumerism in China, and really the development of the people's Republic of China after 1949, famously in the 19, fifties, early 1950s, it was known as daca older brother.

12:41 - It was a model for what, China wanted to do. but China increasingly became, dissatisfied with what it saw, going on in the Soviet Union, disgusted, for instance, with the inequalities emerging. The exact same inequalities that they would, continually to, criticize, in the Soviet Union began to emerge in their own country. So much so in the early, by the early 1960s when they split with the Soviet Union, they accused Khrushchev of enacting a capitalist restoration.

13:11 - Now, one of the things I I point out in my book, when I emphasize that my interpretation of everything going on here, that they weren't building socialism, but rather building a different version of variety, a state led variety of capitalism would've been completely sensible to my subjects. Why? Because the Communist party themselves ironically disseminated, Hey, guys, this is what a revol

13:35 - after a communist revolution, this is what the restoration of capitalism looks like. Look at the Soviet Union. Well, you didn't have to look far to see the exact types of inequalities emerging across Chinese society. So the Soviet Union, on the one hand, became an initial model of, okay, how do we go about having, the state dominate the economy? But then by the early 1960s became a sort of cautionary tale

14:00 - of if we don't address these, burgeoning inequalities that seem to be accompanying our building socialism, we're gonna end up like the Soviet Union having a technocratic elite that sure seems like the functional equivalent of a capitalist class in capitalist countries. It may be different in that it's not privately owned capital and may be state owned instead, but you'd still have this group of people who were separated from production, who were responsible for deciding where everything was allocated,

14:30 - and those people would be the primary beneficiaries. In other words, you'd have a class-based society, and by one definition, ergo or consequently, you'd have capitalism. So Soviet Union played this sort of, twin role of both, here's, here's how to go about doing it, but then providing a cautionary tale, and then ironically, disseminating the idea of doubt about what the Communist party was actually building throughout Chinese society.

14:55 - So I would categorically reject the idea that people inside China who are living this experiment, always thought, this is what socialism must look like. No, when we begin to look a little bit deeper and look beyond the people who are benefiting, you could find, find plenty of both words and deeds indicating, that, that these people took that Soviet lesson to heart and saw, I better get mine, because these inequalities are unfolding pretty quickly. Envision capitalism in China

15:22 - and consumerism in China is existing on a spectrum, a spectrum from total state domination, which never exists to total market mediation from total pri or from total public ownership of everything to total private ownership of everything, every country, every industrializing country, for me, is shifting along that spectrum. Guess what? Most late comers to industrial capitalism are, are quite a bit, whether they call themselves communist or not, are at that state led end of the spectrum.

15:52 - So in the realm of, of, of, consumerism, we see a heavy state role in all those three areas that I named a heavy state role in saying what we're gonna produce less caviar, more steel, for instance. what ideas, that's where advertising comes in here, how we're gonna go about circulating ideas and what the content of those ideas are going to be. And then they're gonna try to intervene by holding up models of this is what a good socialist to new, good new,

16:19 - revolutionary socialist person looks like. They're gonna try to control all three of those things, but as just as sort I've said on the spectrum, no, no such thing as a perfect exemplar of either end of that, they couldn't control all of that. So they would both try to control the message by control, by, by controlling the media, and the movies being produced and every other aspect being produced, but they weren't able to control

16:43 - how people were receiving those messages. So you'd have a villain, for instance, in a film like, never forget the name of the film as in Mouse, famous line. Never Forget Class Struggle. The villain, is this acquisitive guy who wants to acquire a leather jacket, so that he can feel better about himself, again, identity through consumption. And he starts to engage in all sorts of illegal activity. The, of course, the moral of the story was meant to be,

17:08 - don't be like this guy. Don't engage in illegal hunting so that you can, neglect your factory, your state factory work, and instead use your labor power for private gain over here. But how many people took the opposite message from that? How many people said, gee, that leather jacket does look nice, and he does look, pretty, pretty good in that jacket. I want to get one of those too. And wow, I never thought that I,

17:30 - maybe I could go out in the forest and shoot a few, whatever they have in their forest and sell it in the market, you know, underground marketplace. So yeah, there this, what I call state consumerism is a good, I, I, a good example of trying to do both things, trying to contain what's going on as you industrialize the production of more and more stuff, and saying, officially the line was,

17:54 - frugal living, live a frugal life and work very hard. So the ideal socialist person was one that worked their tail off on behalf of the state, but asked very little in return, guess what? The reality in, in an increasingly in egalitarian society was sending people the opposite message. So that just intensified that, that contradiction that I've talked about throughout this, that they would have pretty sounding socialist words of creating someday, often the not too distant future in

18:23 - egalitarian society. But the reality on the ground was the intensification of those inequalities that Marx predicted, along with all the others, that we can imagine differences between men and women, minority peoples versus Han and so on. Since the Cold War, we've been told to see the world as divided between communist countries and capitalist countries. but I think that's a false dichotomy.

18:46 - I think we explain a lot more of what's going on in the ground as we, if we see them as varieties of capitalism. So in the late 1970s, after Mao dies, and China suddenly shifts to using shifts along that spectrum towards the use of more markets and, and toward allowing more private accumulation, private control over capital, this doesn't seem like an abandonment of the revolution. It sort of explains

19:09 - how they're reconfiguring these institutional arrangements, such as of how you allocate capital, in, in order to continue to grow. I call this an invitation because I say, don't take my word for it. Go back to some of these topics and think about them for yourselves and see, does this, does my way of looking at the world explain the material better than the, what I, what I think of

19:31 - as the Orthodox communism versus capitalism, cold War holdover. I think it does, it certainly does in the realm of consumerism. But really, as I've looked around to other topics, it, it, it just explains a lot more of that history a lot better once we, liberate ourselves from the hold, perhaps emotional hold, that, that Cold War framing, has had for us. And indeed, given what's going on in the world may have

19:56 - for us, again, as we redivide the world between us and them.

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